I suppose I should come clean and say that I was once a … well… there’s no polite way to say this. I was once… a liberal.

Or, I once thought myself to be a liberal.

And there’s really nothing wrong with that, because some of the smartest people I know once thought themselves to be liberal. There are a ton of clichés to describe the phenomenon: A man who isn’t a liberal at 20 has no heart, but a man who’s still a liberal at 60 has no brain. My favorite is the one about how a conservative is just a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. I like the flavor of that one; I like what it implies about reality and what it implies about the survival ability of a conservative.

I think that considering yourself a liberal in your teens and twenties is pretty much inevitable in America. And, really, that’s fine. Irresponsibility of all kids is typically tolerated by people who aren’t really adults yet, and political irresponsibility is a lot more innocuous than drunk driving or the mismanagement of pregnancy and/or children. Liberalism on the part of young people should especially be tolerated when you consider that young people today are hit over the head repeatedly with liberal dogma.

Liberalism seeps out of modern society in America like infection from a neglected wound. Alright, I’m sorry, I know that’s disgusting, but I can’t think of another phrase that better sums up my position on the topic. Our culture, our media, our academic institutions… they’re all havens for liberal elitism. It was just as bad during my childhood in the 80’s as it is today. I remember the Animal Rights posters in the police station in the early Lethal Weapon movies. (Yep, cops who had time to remind us all that fur, too, is murder.) I remember the liberal spin on TV, where Alex P. Keaton was presented as the weirdo on Family Ties because he was conservative. And rock music? Forget about it. Remember the degrading Ronald Reagan puppet in that Genesis video? Remember REM, and how liberal they were even before they sucked? Bring it forward into the 90’s and it seemed that a liberal agenda was a pre-req to get a recording contract. And, boy, did those angry liberal lyrics really hit the spot for those of us with some leftover teen angst to burn. Trust me on this one, this is coming from a guy with a Pearl Jam tattoo on his left shoulder.

The thing that made liberalism so appealing was the “us against them” mindset. Every teenage kid goes through that phase and the ones with half a brain are going to eventually start thinking about political and social issues. The liberals have always done a good job of painting all conservatives as elderly, wealthy, bitter, asexual white men with big cigars and chauffeurs who drive them from the country club to the bank. That’s an easy caricature to dislike, and it is hammered again and again into the heads of young people. Liberals rely on that stereotype as an effective recruiting technique, and as far as they’re concerned, all conservatives fit it. That’s why so many conservatives who don’t fit that stereotype, such as Bruce at Gay Patriot, J.C. Watts, and Tammy Bruce, make liberals so uncomfortable. They prove the stereotype wrong, they indicate the real diversity that exists under the conservative umbrella. Liberals don’t like that because they believe that they own the concept of diversity. In fact, liberals approve of and champion diversity of every kind except one: diversity of ideas.

As I got older and started to notice differences between my own ideas and the stated ideas of the people I’d been surrounding myself with, I became acquainted with two wonderful concepts which, in a way, saved me. Those concepts were doubt and introspection.

My awakening to my own conservative nature began when I started to doubt that my friends and peers were totally serious about some of the issues they were championing. How serious could they be about hating their own race? How could they be so anti-anything-corporate with a Coke in one hand and a CD released by Warner Brothers in the other? And how much of the self-righteous liberal indignation I was feeling was real and how much of it was just a combination of laziness, immaturity, and my own sheep-like mentality? This doubt and introspection hit me right about the same time we elected Bill Clinton and I saw what a liberal really would do in the White House. I began realizing that I agreed with the conservatives around me a hell of a lot more than I did with the liberals around me. I began realizing that… well, whatta ya know… my own ideas were less like Eddie Vedder’s and more like Ronald Reagan’s.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that, in order to cling to liberal beliefs into substantial adulthood, a person would have to be a master at denial. He or she’d have to avoid introspection at all costs and see any doubt about his or her ideas as the encroachment of the right wing’s continuous efforts to brainwash the masses. In order to continue to see yourself as liberal, you have to tell yourself that liberalism always equals correctness and conservatism always equals closed-mindedness.

If you doubt it, try this little test: Ask any real conservative you know what the best thing about Bill Clinton’s Presidency was. He or she will probably think for a moment and then comment on how Clinton lowered the deficit or how he drifted from the left back to the mainstream and helped pass welfare reform. The conservative will probably qualify that observation by noting that the good Clinton did was far outweighed by the bad, true enough… but he or she will most likely have something good to say about Clinton. Then, ask any real liberal you know what the best thing is about George W. Bush’s Presidency. Don’t be surprised when you are assured that there’s nothing good about George W. Bush, that he’s evil and stupid, and that he must be stopped before he destroys the world. That's the official, approved liberal stance on Bush, and any liberal is going to do his duty and parrot it mindlessly.

That’s the difference between a conservative and a liberal. A conservative puts a lot of thought into his ideas and a liberal puts a lot of other people’s ideas into his thought.

So there’s my confession. It’s probably not as scandalous as it could have been, so I hope it isn’t a disappointment. Maybe it’ll help if I admit that I still enjoy those Pearl Jam albums. Hell, I even still sing along.